


Judith and her Maidservant

by Siria



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Fix-It, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-17 16:02:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16519643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: Later, Dora would think back on it and realise that clinically speaking, she had died.





	Judith and her Maidservant

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to trinityofone for betaing.

Later, Dora would think back on it and realise that clinically speaking, she had died. Her heart had stopped beating, her circulatory system had slowed to halt, her unblinking eyes had observed the skin of her own hands grow pale and cold. For the length of time it took two of Drake's security detail to bundle her body up and dump it into a ravine several miles past the boundary of the Life Foundation compound, she was dead according to every medical and legal metric enforced in the state of California. 

For Dora, this all took place in the moment between one breath and the next. 

She inhaled and opened her eyes and her heart didn't beat. She exhaled and there was a desire there, twinned with her own— **OUT** —and her nails were sharp enough to rend plastic and duct tape. She inhaled and stood and tilted her head back to look at a night sky that was so much brighter than Dora had ever thought possible. 

**WE ARE HUNGRY** , said the voice that had whispered to her between breaths. **DORA, WE ARE STARVING**. 

"No," Dora said. Had her voice always sounded like this? She ran her tongue over the tips of her canine teeth. Did they feel sharper now? She liked the thought of that. "You're hungry. I'm pissed."

Dora started up the ravine's steep slope. The heel of her left shoe snapped and she took them both off, hurling them far away from her into the trees. What good would office-appropriate pumps be to her anymore? What good would any of it be: the post-docs, the funding applications, the articles revised and resubmitted in the small hours of the morning with the baby asleep in her lap? Dora had wanted to learn, and oh, had she ever. 

"You know what I discovered today?" Dora asked her other self. 

**YES, OH YES** , her other self said. **WE KNOW ALL YOUR LEARNING, DORA.**

"The true importance of priorities," Dora said, pushing herself faster and faster up the slope. Scree skittered away from her; tree roots and thorns dug into her bare feet. She didn't bleed. "Oh, and expectations. He expected me to just _die_. He thought he could just throw me away."

 **DON'T WANT YOU TO DIE, DORA,** her other self said, curling slick and savage around her thoughts, a blood-warm intimacy. **WANT TO USE YOUR _TEETH_.**

By the time Dora made it back to the road, it was raining. The asphalt was slick and cold beneath her feet, and her hair was a tangled mass around her face. "I shouldn't let you." And she shouldn't, she really shouldn't, there were so many reasons. She wasn't the kind of thing the U.S. government put in a minimum security prison, not any more: she was the kind of thing it put down, whether with a cop's bullet or an Avenger's fist. The wisest thing to do would be to lie low and get help. Helen Cho might have ideas about a viable separation therapy. After all, Dora had a kid and a mortgage and work to do on an NSF app that was due in two weeks—not to mention that she couldn't imagine any scenario where Rabbi Lewin would shrug and tell her sure, go ahead, eating someone's pancreas is perfectly kosher. 

**BUT DORA** , her other self moaned, **WE'RE SO HUNGRY.**

"I shouldn't let you, but I want to. I want to a lot." Her other self's pleasure at that was a sharp-sweet shock. Dora couldn't ever remember feeling an emotion like that before: so uncomplicated, so atavistic, unmoored from the civilising forces of language and logic and consequences. She licked her lips. "If I do, you'll have to follow some rules."

 **YUCK** , said her other self. 

"No," Dora said firmly as she set out along the road in what she thought was the right direction. The rain was growing heavier, but she didn't feel cold. She tried to impress images on her other self: what it could gain if it followed the rules, what it could lose if it didn't. There could be feasting, but only if goals were met first. Dora knew this all too well. She'd made it through grad school in five years flat, even though she'd had to defend her dissertation with a trash can next to her because of the morning sickness. 

Dora understood priorities.

 **OH, OH, WE GET IT NOW** , her other self crowed. **YOU HAD ONLY TO SAY, DORA, THIS IS NOT _RULES_ , YOU ARE LEADER-PROGENITOR. WE FOLLOW. WE _LIKE_ THIS, WE WERE SPAWNED TO FOLLOW. TELL US WHAT TO DO. YOUR ANGER IS DELICIOUS.**

"We are going to cause problems for a lot of people," Dora said. "So many of them, and they'll all deserve it." She could see it all now, could look at the world as her other self did and see the illogic of it all through alien eyes. She'd wanted something better for her son than this, and now—now she could make that happen. As she walked, she pulled off her sodden, muddy clothes and discarded them by the roadside, and let her other self become her second skin—let it rifle through her hindbrain for inspiration, for every lethal, fascinating woman baby Dora had admired and been told she could never be. 

**DORA, WE ARE BEAUTIFUL** , her other self said, hugging itself to her. **LOOK HOW WE ARE A SHARP AND SHINING THING.**

Dora held up their hand and looked at it, splaying their fingers out wide. Black and slick with claws, unmistakable claws, and she never had to sheathe them again if she didn't want to. 

"Thank you, my dear," Dora said. 

**DEAR** , her other self crooned, sending delight and adrenaline shivering through Dora's body. She had to stop and breathe until the sharpest sensations passed, because this was—oh, had anyone ever touched her like this before? Known her like this? **OH, OH, IT IS SO NICE TO BE DEAR, WE DIDN'T KNOW.**

In the woods away to the right, Dora could hear something moving: a prey animal, large and unsuspecting and so much living meat, right there for the taking. Her mouth watered; her stomach ached with hunger. 

**YES, YES** , her other self said. **KILL IT. CLEAVE THE HEAD FROM THE STILL-LIVING BODY AND LET US SUCK THE MARROW FROM ITS BONES. SO TASTY.**

This wouldn't be following kashrut, Dora thought as she left the road again, but she could feel her other self weakening and pikuach nefesh was a mitzvah, after all.

"Okay," Dora said, "this is how it's going to work. We're going to eat, and then we'll go back to the city and I'll show you how to live like a millennial."

** WHAT IS THIS, TO LIVE LIKE A MILLENNIAL? **

The smile on Dora's face felt alien and right. "Let's eat the rich."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Judith and her Maidservant [PODFIC]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17997782) by [Opalsong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Opalsong/pseuds/Opalsong)




End file.
